Neighbourhood screen flashing to black
cwykes:
Does anyone know why this happens, how to avoid it or better still how to fix affected 'hoods? I thought this was a post-seasons patch problem, but I hit it again yesterday running OFB only with Numenor's base game starter. I also did a search on MATY and found a post from someone who first hit this problem with Pets.
Basically the neighborhood map never loads. The screen is flashing between black and the blue "hood loading" screen. By clicking around you can get the text about lots to show up and you can get into lots. Once it has happened, the problem seems permanent.
I've had this happen when I first tried to play a hood after installing Seasons & patch together. I've had it happen when I added the Seasons patch to a seasons game that was OK and now I've had it happen to an OFB hood where the 'hood screen had been laggy with commands not registering and graphics not keeping up. No error messages from on screen any time. There is one non-empty log from todays session after I re-installed BaseGameStarter - it's a New-config-log.txt and I've attached it. The hood with the problem is N003.
Some affected hoods were big or complicated, this one is tiny and new - played only 5-6 times for building and lot testing, it has 2 sims and 20 lots. I'd had the computer on a long time before I hit the problem. I can't remember what I was doing, but it's possible I'd been playing BV in my full game.
I have a full set of EPs and SPs at last, all patched. I have a camera mod, usershaders on, boolprop testingcheatsenabled true, most of the directors cut & maxis CC only. My PC's about 5 years old; it's a Dell Dimension 2400 with a 2.66 Ghz processor, Windows XP home SP2, 1GB RAM, a Radeon 9250 Graphics card, soundmax digital audio that came with the PC and a large fixed page file as per Paladin's tutorial. I'll post dxdiag if that helps.
Links to related posts:-
my previous thread with false assumptions and incomplete data:
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,9008.0.html
Eleonora blames it on too many trees
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8285.0.html
Chienne got it for the first time after the Seasons patch like I did the first couple of times
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7895.msg219017.html#msg219017
Imyourboy had it with Pets - blamed it on a camera mod
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,7300.0.html
Kala had a similar problem which JFade thought was just memory overload.
http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,8916.msg244126.html#msg244126
ReneeFox:
Honey, tons of people are having this problem (including me)!!!!!!! Been whining about it since BV came out on TS2's site, and EA appears to be ignoring the issue while racing off to create another EP. There was supposed to be another patch for BV, and lots of people are asking about it ... only to get 0 response from EAxis. Boooooo; greedy bastardos! There was a video driver memory leak in Pets that caused the game to crash/freeze all the time. nVidia put out a driver work-around that made this disappear during Seasons. Then, either BV found another leak, or that was never the problem to begin with. nVidia says BV is using the wrong instructions to identify the video card, but with stuff like this, who really knows? I keep my computer ship-shape, and fought long and hard for EA to fix this after Pets came out. When it happened to BV, I gave up buying anything else, because I had nobody else to gang-up with and go after EA like we all should be doing about this!!! I ran out of steam, and will probably never extend that much energy alone about an addicting game like The Sims. ;D
boolProp useShaders off helps, but does not eliminate the freeze and makes various graphical details disappear... :(
cwykes:
Thanks for the sympathy :) So you think the flashing 'hood screen is just another sympton of the big memory leak/crappy coding issue? I was beginning to think it was something specific to my PC set up. My game ran fine when I only had base + OFB, so why am I getting it now if I'm running the same set up via the Base Game Starter? I had usershaders on in the OFB days too.
I've seen reports of graphical problems of course, but I've not found posts about flashing hood screens. I've also seen plenty of posts about crashing and freezing from Pets onward, but my game is not actually doing either. My problems are only on the 'hood screen; I don't have any real problems within lots.
My problem can't be Nvidia - I've got a radeon card and that's ATI.
I did get a reply from a real person when I reported it to Eaxis, unfortunately the suggested fix didn't work.
jlkeal:
I've got the same problem with an ATI card, as well. Mine started out getting wonky in the neighborhood screen (the same flashing) and has now progressed onto the lots. Even the small lots. It always happens after several hours of play. So far, the only way I've gotten around it is to lower some of my graphic settings.
cwykes:
Have you ever got the hood screen back to normal for a 'hood with a flashing screen? Mine seem permanently fubared, but maybe I haven't tried the right things.
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